Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

Sometimes coincidences work in combination like tumblers on a padlock and really do leave one wondering about the possibility of a shadowy paranormal universe existing on the fringes of time, space, and dimension. But shelving the Rod Serlingesque script for a moment, ten days before the Veteran's Day ceremony in Dighton, Massachusetts honoring Frederick Anderson, I stumbled across this snippet from a 1996 edition of Forbes Magazine posted on the Web:

"[The flag of the 27th South Carolina Infantry which was captured] by Union Private Frederick C. Anderson (who won a Medal of Honor) for this action) was auctioned off at Lancaster, Pa. for $73,700. The buyer, Pamplin Park Civil War Site, is currently displaying the flag at its museum in Petersburg."

Approximately a week before seeing the reference to the flag my friend Lynn had emailed pictures of the actual Medal of Honor awarded to Anderson, which had passed through generations of Anderson descendants and now rests in the possession of his niece Cecilia. If you've read Parts One through Three of the Anderson saga there's no need to write anything more about the misty shadow of tumblers.

On the drive to Petersburg I passed Ft. A.P. Hill and then later, close by the entrance to Pamplin Park Historical Park, historical marker S49, which read: "In the field a short distance north of this road, the Confederate General A.P. Hill was killed, April 2, 1865...." Two and a half years earlier than the date recorded on the sign, Frederick Anderson and the 18th Massachusetts Infantry had squared off against Little Powell's Division at Shepherdstown, after which Powell wrote of the Potomac running red with the blood of Union soldiers.

If you can apply significance to and know the history of an artifact on display in a museum it takes on a completely different quality. The artifact becomes more than a curiosity, more than an inanimate object from the distant past. It takes on form, substance, and becomes a living, breathing testimonial. I was transfixed by the flag, studying every small hole, every tear in its fabric, seemingly every thread in the four foot square cloth; its red triangles, its blue cross, and its now browned borders and stars. I ran a movie in my head of a field hard by a railroad track on a late August afternoon in 1864 shrouded in a fog of smoke from discharged muskets, of men shouting, screaming, running, advancing, retreating, falling, standing still, and of one man in blue closing distance on another in gray, the latter at the head of his decimated South Carolina regiment lifting his staff skyward, waving it from side to side, trying to rally those not yet fallen, trying to rally those who had, until hands that had tilled soil in Raynham, Massachusetts tore the wooden pole from his grasp and leveled a gun barrel at his chest.

Mine has been a full circle journey in a universe of time, space, and dimension; a full circle journey that accompanies me on a short drive to a field hard by a railroad track; a full circle journey that has led me to a medal for gallantry and ultimately to a grave of one that I've never known, yet, at the same time, have known all my life.

For a town founded in 1672 and with a current population a shade over 7,000 residents, Dighton, Massachusetts has an incredible number of cemeteries, 54 to be exact. Compare that to New York City, which has an estimated 33, and you’ll understand why trying to figure out where Civil War Medal of Honor recipient Frederick C. Anderson was interred was such a daunting task. According to one town official that task was the proverbial “needle in a haystack.”

How and why Anderson came to buried in Dighton, which had a historically long run as a nautical import-export hub before its evolution into a Boston and Providence bedroom community, is pure guess work, but the most probable explanation as to why his remains lie in a Unitarian cemetery is, according to a church member who doubles as the cemetery's caregiver, Anderson's membership in the Dighton Community Church. There’s speculation, too, that an illegitimate daughter, who preceded Anderson in death, lies two headstones away from his.

Gathering at the Dighton Town Hall on Veteran’s Day, a small group, including a videographer from the Boston Globe, heard Charlie Mogayzel relate first hand his efforts to find Anderson’s grave, while Dighton officials, in turn, spoke of the honor descended upon their town for having a bonafide, albeit deceased and heretofore undiscovered, hero in their midst.

Anderson’s grave is marked by a standard issue government headstone supplied by Sheldon & Sons of West Rutland, Vermont some six years after his death. There was a report of efforts to have his headstone upgraded by the Veteran’s Administration so that Anderson’s status as a Medal of Honor recipient would be displayed. The V.A., being the good bureaucratic agency that it is, responded that as Anderson already had a grave marker they could not justify issuing another. There is a real possibility, however, that funding from the town and private donations may result in an appropriate tribute.

I’ll skip the part where I was called upon to talk about the 18th Massachusetts Infantry, simply because I can’t remember much, if anything, of what I said, although I have some dim recollection of saying we, meaning Tom Churchill, Steve McManus, and myself, had been chasing “Our Dead Guys” for a long time and instead fast forward to the ceremony that took place at the cemetery.



Filming in a cemetery in which burials date from one year prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Boston Globe Videographer Darren Durlach captured the essence of the tribute to one ordinary citizen soldier who went above and beyond, as did legions of comrades in blue, white and black, to ensure we remained as an nation, though flawed, indivisible.

To watch Darren's video click here.